The Fante King Of Hiplife – Kwaw Kese

Kwaw Kese, the self-professed King of Fante is a Ghanaian Hiplife artist like no other.

Called Abodam (which means craziness in Fante) by his fans, Kwaw is the first and biggest music artist to sing in the local language of Fante. Kwaw is well known for his hit album Abodam 2007 from which he cleaned up an impressive 5 awards at the 2008 Ghana Music Awards.

Taking Fante, Ghana’s third most-spoken language, to international stage successfully is no mean feat but Kwaw has shared the stage with some of Africa’s biggest artists singing in his mother tongue, holding his own alongside the likes of PSquare, Sarkodie and Obrafour. In fact, he has owned many awards stages year on year across the world, taking his unique sound – a combination Fante with High Life/ Hip Life – as far afield as Europe. Just one look at the fans’ comments on Instagram shows his music is loved and respected worldwide.

Kwaw Kese says he was born to sing and rap and this became obvious when he featured on Obrafour’s executioner’s diary with his ‘Oye Nonsense’ track. Asked why he chose that title, he said: “I choose ‘Oye Nonsense’ because…a boy or a man could go for a lady, help her, cater for her needs and so many others things and then someone could just come from nowhere and take the lady away or vice-versa and this is “ Nonsense”. It’s something people are uncomfortable to talk about, but I thought I could talk about it ‘Oye Nonsense’ and I did.

Check out the video for Aseda in which Kwese ft Duke D2 is sitting in a prison cell, dies and is resurrected. He was convicted of smoking weed in public earlier this year and sentenced to a day in prison. Perhaps making this video was how he made the most of his time inside and he came out feeling renewed. If so, talk about multi-tasking!